Fake News as a Threat to the Democratic Media Environment: Past Conditions of Media Regulation and Their Contemporary Applicability to New Media in the United States of America and South Korea

Abstract

This study uses a comparative case study policy analysis to evaluate whether the media regulation standards the governments of the United States of America and South Korea used in the past apply to fake news on social media the Internet today. We first identify the shared conditions in which the two governments intervened in the free press. Then, we examine media regulation laws regarding these conditions and review court cases in which they were utilized. In each section, we draw similarities and differences between the two governments’ course of action. Such comparative analysis will serve useful in the conclusion, where we assess the applicability of those conditions to fake news on the Internet in each country and deliberate possible recommendations as well as policy flow between the countries.